Two of Britain’s most exciting short story writers joined in conversation to celebrate the release of their highly-acclaimed debuts in paperback. Faber author Jem Calder and Edge Hill Prize winner Saba Sams read from and discussed their stories with Tom Conaghan, publisher of Scratch Books.Find more events at the Bookshop: lrb.me/eventspodBuy Reward System: lrb.me/rewardsystemBuy Send Nudes: lrb.me/sendnudes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Meat Love, the latest book-length essay by Amber Husain (following on from 2021’s Replace Me), explores how meat-eating has become irretrievably enmeshed with capitalist desire, in what Sophie Lewis has described as ‘an exquisitely-crafted little hand grenade lobbed at the gentrification of the carnivorous mind’.She is in conversation with Rebecca May Johnson, whose Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen (Pushkin, 2022) touches on many of the same revolutionary themes. Johnson is an essayist and critic, and senior editor at the online magazine Vittles. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Melodrama, biography, cold war thriller, drug memoir, essay in fragments, mystery – ​Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors is cult critic Ian Penman’s long awaited first original book, a kaleidoscopic study of the late West German film maker Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945–1982). Written quickly under a self-imposed deadline in the spirit of Fassbinder himself, who would often get films made in a matter of weeks or months, ​Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors presents the filmmaker as a pivotal figure in the late 1970s moment between late modernism and the advent of postmodernism and the digital revolution. Penman was joined in conversation by Adam Mars-Jones.Buy a copy of Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors: lrb.me/fassbinderFind more events at the Bookshop: lrb.me/eventspod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

K Patrick’s Mrs. S is one of the most eagerly awaited debuts of the year, having already secured for its author a spot on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list. A queer romance set in the staffroom of an elite English boarding school, Lillian Fishman has described it as ‘a voluptuous performance in the art of withholding’. Patrick was in conversation with editor and writer Amelia Abraham, whose most recent book, Queer Intentions (Macmillan) was nominated for a Polari First Book award in 2020. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

M. John Harrison has produced one of the greatest bodies of fiction of any living British author, encompassing space opera, speculative fiction, fantasy, magical and literary realism. Wish I Was Here is his first work of memoir – an ‘anti-memoir’ – written in his mid-seventies with aphoristic daring and trademark originality and style, fresh after winning the Goldsmiths Prize in 2020 for The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again. Harrison was joined in conversation with writer and critic Jennifer Hodgson.Find more events at the Bookshop: lrb.me/eventspod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.